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Google Home and Home Mini smart speakers will go on sale in 7 new nations this year, a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. The smart speakers will be available later this year in Spain, Mexico, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
The move nearly doubles the number of nations that sell Google smart speakers. Home and Home Minis are currently available in eight nations.
By comparison, Google’s major competitor Amazon currently sells Echo smart speakers in more than 80 nations as of last December. That said, Alexa today is only able to speak German, Japanese, and various forms of English.
The move follows the expansion of Google Assistant from 9 to 16 languages in February, including Korean, Indonesian, Dutch, and various languages found in parts of Scandinavia. Support was also extended to Hindi earlier this year, and last month Home speakers went on sale in India for the first time.
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Support for manufacturers using the Google Assistant SDK to place the AI assistant in new hardware and devices was also extended to new countries today. Google has pledged to make its Assistant available in more than 30 languages by the end of the year.
Google Assistant is growing quickly, with the company announcing the tool is now on 500 million devices. Also today, Google announced a slew of new features coming to Google Assistant, including six new voices (John Legend coming soon), new Lens computer vision features, and an experimental feature to make phone calls and schedule appointments on your behalf.
Developers making voice app experiences were also extended new offerings today like shareable links, customizable designs for interaction on devices with screens, and built-in intents to make voice apps better understand exactly what it is a user wants.
The rush of recent Google news comes out of I/O, the company’s annual developer conference being held May 8-10 at the Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View, California.
